Religion and Racial Progress in Twentieth-Century Britain: Bishop Barnes of Birmingham

253 Pages·2017·2.343 MB·English

by  Patrick T. Merricks (auth.)

religion and racial progress
in twentieth-century britain
bishop barnes of birmingham
PATRICK T. MERRICKS
Religion and Racial Progress
in Twentieth-Century Britain
Patrick T. Merricks
Religion and Racial
Progress in Twentieth-
Century Britain
Bishop Barnes of Birmingham
Patrick T. Merricks
School of History, Philosophy
and Culture
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-53987-4 ISBN 978-3-319-53988-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53988-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937732
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Dedicated to the memory of my Grandpa,
Kenneth Hammond (1928–2016)
C
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Anglican Modernism 27
3 Heredity and Race 73
4 The Eugenic Philosophy 113
5 Negative Eugenics 167
6 Conclusion 219
Bibliography 233
Index 247
vii
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 4.1 From Eldon Moore, ‘Social Progress and Racial Decline,’
The Eugenics Review 18, 2 (July 1926), 124 117
Fig. 4.2 From Carlos P. Blacker and David V. Glass, The Future
of Our Population? (London: Eugenics Society, 1936), 29 119
Fig. 4.3 From Eldon Moore, ‘The Present State of the Nation,
As Deduced from Vital Statistics,’ The Eugenics Review
22, 4 (January 1931), 267 120
Fig. 5.1 From Ernest J. Lidbetter, ‘The Present Position of Mental
Deficiency under the Act,’ The Eugenics Review 16,
4 (January 1925), 265–266 170
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In the final months of the Second World War, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, received a private letter in which the author
revealed a passionate sympathy for the sterilisation and euthanasia of
“those carrying unwholesome genes.”1 It was written by one of the most
remarkable figures in the British eugenics movement: Ernest William
Barnes (1874–1953), the Bishop of Birmingham. Ernest Barnes was a
prominent, well-respected and unique figure. He believed that the crea-
tion of a spiritually-eugenic society was Britain’s saviour from the deca-
dence of modernity. The Bishop gained publicity as a radical reformer of
the Anglican Church and as a member of the British Eugenics Society.
Until now, he was forgotten by history, reflecting Frederick Hale’s asser-
tion that research on “Christian responses to eugenics in the United
Kingdom […] remains in its infancy.”2
Barnes was often at odds with outdated traditional Christian institu-
tions. He denied the existence of miracles, the sacrament, and the virgin
birth; was a pacifist, evolutionist, racist, (negative and positive) eugeni-
cist, birth control sympathiser, and advocate for divorce reform. These
combined with his sympathy for eugenics—only through selective breed-
ing could man and the Church be saved and racial progress be realised.
Barnes’ devotion to God was matched only by his enthusiasm for the
scientific revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries. Eugenics destroyed the divide between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, and
now the British race could choose its own spiritual destiny—degenerate
towards primitive Catholicism or evolve towards God. The self-proclaimed
© The Author(s) 2017 1
P.T. Merricks, Religion and Racial Progress in Twentieth-Century
Britain, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53988-1_1
2 P.T. MERRICKS
“bold, bad Bishop” used his public prominence as a platform to promote
the urgency of religious revival and importance of the eugenic cause.
Although a Eugenics Society member for 30 years, his most active period
as an advocate was in the late 1940s. For many, this was all too soon after
the defeat of Nazi Germany, which had used negative eugenics as an
instrument of racial hygiene to cleanse the Aryan state. The horrific crimes
of the Holocaust were brought to the attention of the public and eugen-
ics gained a stigma it never lost. This is when Barnes campaigned for the
introduction of sterilisation and euthanasia as key components of the new
welfare state; the debate that ensued was as fascinating as it was polarised.
The three decades that spanned his tenure as Bishop saw dramatic
social and political changes. Religious decline, the popularisation of birth
control, women’s liberation, overpopulation, World War, postwar recon-
struction, the birth of the welfare state and National Health Service, and
the beginnings of mass immigration all had eugenic implications for the
future of the race. Barnes cultivated relationships with prominent eugen-
icists, like birth control advocate, Marie Stopes, and Secretary of the
Eugenics Society and supporter of artificial insemination, Carlos Blacker.
The Bishop delivered lectures at prestigious events. He presented to sci-
entists and doctors (including the British Medical Association and British
Association for the Advancement of Science) celebrating the advance-
ments made by modern science and endorsing Protestantism as the
moral compass of Western civilisation. He gave the Eugenics Society’s
flagship ‘Galton Lecture’ on two occasions, in 1926 and again in 1949;
took part in the Modern Churchmen’s Conference in 1924; the 1930
and 1948 Lambeth Conferences; and several Church Convocations
on divorce, marriage and reproduction. More than simply a media-
tor between the clergyman, scientist and eugenicist, Barnes contributed
directly to reassessing the Anglican position on birth control, hereditary
disease and marriage and inspired the ‘secular’ Eugenics Society to give
the Church a prominent role in Britain’s racial future.
This book delivers an analysis of Barnes’ Christian-eugenic philoso-
phy, which I have termed ‘bio-spiritual determinism’. It is contextu-
alised within discourses such as poverty, population, gender equality,
pacifism, racism and secular and Anglican interpretations of modern-
ism. At its core, it has two original themes: the philosophical com-
patibility of eugenics and religion and eugenics in Britain after 1945.
This book begins filling the scholastic gap on Christian eugenics in
twentieth century Britain while simultaneously showing that eugenic
1 INTRODUCTION 3
and racist thought did not disappear with the fall of German National
Socialism. The subsequent chapters have been conducted with the fol-
lowing aims:
1. To show that Ernest Barnes was a significant historical figure both
for his importance to Anglican religious revival and to the British
eugenics movement.
2. To map the evolution of Barnes’ eugenic ideas from the 1920s to
the 1950s. This introduces political, moral, religious and scientific
debates that influenced him, which have not previously been con-
nected historically. Barnes’ eugenic ideology united a vast range of
discourses, to name a few: the decline in church attendance, the
World Wars, population increase, immigration, the rise of social-
ism, and the birth of the British welfare state.
3. To provide a detailed analysis of the relationship between eugenics
and religion in Britain, on both intellectual and institutional lev-
els. How important was Barnes’ position as Bishop of Birmingham
to his eugenic ideology? How did other leaders of the Anglican
Church react to his reformist views and did other eugenicists share
his belief that God had designed evolution?
4. To emphasise that eugenics was not a ‘reactionary’ ideology whose
success was confined to extreme right-wing, racist circles, but a
progressive, modernist ideological force that could combine with
various political positions and ethical systems, both secular and
sacred.
the history of British eugeniCs
Historiography of British eugenics gives a useful overview of some
important discussions in this book; namely the relationship between
eugenics and themes like religion, political representation, population,
birth control, war and race.
During the late 1960s and into the 1970s, together with Germany
and the United States, Britain was one of the first countries to have its
eugenics movement researched. When G.R. Searle wrote the comprehen-
sive 1976 text, Eugenics and Politics in Britain, 1900–1914, the Eugenics
Society, though marginalised, was still active. It did not change its name
to the Galton Institute until 1989. Searle’s work suggested that eugenic
thought, rather than a product of Nazi ideology, had also permeated